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Chapter 8: Real Is for Always

What is the difference between Alexander and Buddha? Alexander wants to be special, wants to possess the whole world, wants to be unique. And Buddha? - Buddha simply wants to be himself. There is no need to go anywhere, there is no need to become at all. No future is needed, no time is required: Buddha can be this very moment what he wants to be because he already is that. But for Alexander even millions of lives will not be enough, his journey will remain incomplete. He will never be able to bring it to a conclusion. It is a vicious circle: he will be frustrated again and again, and out of frustration he will create bigger illusions, stronger illusions. He will need bigger illusions and stronger illusions.

It is like a drug, I say again. If you take a drug, any drug, sooner or later you become accustomed to it. Then you need more quantities of it, stronger doses of it, and so on and so forth. Small illusions won’t do; once you have become accustomed to them, you will need greater illusions.

This is how people become mad. A madman is one whose illusions have gone completely contrary to reality. Now he lives only in his illusions - there are not even intervals when he sees reality as it is, not even moments of truth. He simply lives in his illusions - he is a madman. And what others are may be a lesser madness, but the madness is there. The difference is only of degree, quantity, but not of quality. Unless you are ready to relax into your being as you are, you are not sane.

I am ordinary, and I say to you Buddha is ordinary. And I say to you all the buddhas have always been ordinary. That is their specialness, because in this world nobody wants to be ordinary. That is their extraordinariness, because they are people who have chosen to be ordinary. That is their humbleness. Jesus says, “Blessed are the meek for theirs is the kingdom of God.” By “meek” he means exactly this: to be just what God has meant you to be; not to aspire to anything at all, to live in a relaxed state.

It is good, Aniruddha, that your illusion is broken. Thank me for it, feel grateful for it, that I have not supported your illusion at all. If you carried it for so many months it was just your work. I was not a support to it.

But his question shows that now he thinks I am ordinary so the problem is arising for him again. Then what is he doing here? Then he should go again to somebody else who is extraordinary. Now will be the decisive moment for him. If seeing that I am ordinary he understands the beauty of being ordinary, celebration will start. If he is feeling frustrated - as if I had deceived him, as if I had been pretending to be extraordinary and now he has found that I am not - then he will have new illusions. He will project his desires onto somebody else. He will find another screen and again he will be frustrated. And he will need bigger and bigger doses, and sooner or later he will be a victim of somebody who is there to exploit people, who is there to pretend, according to your illusions.

That’s why I am so much against Satya Sai Baba: he is trying to help your projections. That is my criticism of his effort. He tries to go with your projections. He is not an independent man, he depends on you. You project and he will try to fulfill your projections - at least he will pretend that you are in the close vicinity of a special man who can do miracles, who can make things appear from nowhere.